Saturday, February 8, 2014

Having been immersed in the left/right facade their entire lives, many have begun to see the world and those around them through that prism. Either someone is on the same "side" as they are, or they are the enemy. There is no room for nuance, no subtle distinctions to be made, no room for alliance or cooperation on matters of great import. Perhaps most devastatingly, there is now little room for any analysis of the powers behind the political throne, the oligarchical financial interests that could care less whether this or that President has a "D" or an "R" next to their name, whether a Prime Minister is "Labour" or "Conservative," whether an MEP identifies with the "left" or the "right." Deprived of this understanding of the real nature of political power, the public is truly powerless to identify the real problem at the root of today's political crisis, let alone even begin to address it.

Award winning Jewish author Phyllis Chesler was questioned and had her bag searched at New York’s JFK Airport as a result of a TSA agent’s suspicions over the fact that she was reading a conservative newspaper.

The incident happened on Wednesday afternoon after Chesler’s flight to Florida was delayed due to the recent ice storms.

As soon as Chesler pulled out a copy of The Jewish Press, a popular English language weekly with a conservative political bent, a TSA agent eyed her with suspicion, approached the author and asked to see the newspaper.

After the TSA agent scrutinized the cover of the newspaper and showed it to another security official, Chesler was ordered to open her luggage, which the two agents then proceeded to rifle through.

During the search, Chesler was interrogated by the two TSA workers. As her luggage was being searched, Chesler noticed that a Muslim woman wearing a niqab that covered her entire face apart from her eyes was allowed through security with no questions asked and with no one even bothering to verify her identity.

Image: The Jewish Press Newspaper.

Chesler was left alone after the two agents found nothing more deadly than a bottle of water. Despite their best efforts to assume the role of political thought police, the TSA workers discovered that reading a newspaper other than the New York Times or the Washington Post isn’t indicative of being a terrorist.

“The issue is not that the Jew was the one who was stopped and the Muslim was the one who sailed through security,” reports the Jewish Press. “The issue is that merely the word Jewish on a newspaper was sufficient to draw the agents’ attention and suspicion, while someone whose identity was impossible to discern, who could be hiding who knows what, was ignored by security – security! professionals.”

As we recently highlighted, the federal agency has also instituted a policy in some airports where loudspeakers warn travelers that they could be arrested if they make jokes about the TSA or its increasingly ludicrous procedures.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

"If you continue on this destructive path, you will ensure your everlasting disgrace in Jewish history for bringing calamity upon the Jewish people."

According to IsraelNationalNews.com (INN), a group called rabbis from the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel penned an open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry calling for an end to his "antagonism" against Israel.

INN reports that the criticisms in the letter stem from Kerry's efforts to "hand over" Israel to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas as well as his threatened global boycott of the Jewish state if peace talks fail. The letter contends that Kerry's plans would result in tens of thousands of Jews being displaced from their homes, something the rabbis equate to "war on God."

Here are excerpts from the rabbis letter as reported by INN:

Your incessant efforts to expropriate integral parts of our Holy Land and hand them over to Abbas’s terrorist gang, amount to a declaration of war against the Creator and Ruler of the universe. For G-d awarded the entire Land of Israel to our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in order that they bequeath it, as an everlasting inheritance, to their descendants, the Jewish people, until the end of all time.

If you continue on this destructive path, you will ensure your everlasting disgrace in Jewish history for bringing calamity upon the Jewish people – like Nebuchadnezer and Titus who destroyed, respectively, the first and second great Temples and the entire Holy City of Jerusalem, and who, by Heavenly punishment, brought eventual disaster upon themselves, too.

By the power of our Holy Torah, we admonish you to cease immediately all efforts to achieve these disastrous agreements – in order to avoid severe Heavenly punishment for everyone involved.

When you live life as a hammer, everything must appear like a nail. So when our economy is run and operated by thefinancial industry, everything must appear like a casino just asking for it in terms of speculation. Such is the state of affairs in a crony capitalistic system. The term gets thrown around but in reality, we do have a system that is punishing the working and middle class in favor of a small connected financially elite. The financial sector in our economy is so powerful, that the biggest financial meltdown in our generation resulted in nothing more than a hand slap and not one heartbeat was skipped on those big banking bonuses. In the meantime the middle class continues to shrink and young Americans are swimming in oceans of student debt. Many are graduating into a tough economy where the market is flooded with low wage jobs. Is this crony financial system benefitting young Americans?

How cronyism hinders economic growth for the young

Take what you can capitalism. We have become a culture that is conditioned on debt. Only a few decades ago, it was feasible for a student to work part-time and pay for a public education. This was manageable and doable. Yet those days are fully gone because inflation has devoured the purchasing power of the dollar. In the cost of higher education, the costs have far outpaced any real growth in incomes. This is why trying to juggle a part-time job and college is not going to cover your costs, but a generation ago this was extremely common. How did this get out of hand? First, the government backs most of the student debt out there. However, the financial industry has co-opted a large part of this market as well. The system also does not allow for student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy and you have nearly the perfect design for a modern day debtor’s prison.

A closed loop system and the young are not part of this club. They are the meat that gets put into the financial grinder.

Think college costs are moving up in a normal way? Take a look at this chart:

This is fascinating. While people scream about the rise in medical care (which is out of control in itself) we find that college tuition is in a league of its own. Since 1978 the cost of a new car has gone up around 95 percent. Medical care? A whopping 613 percent. You would think this is hard to beat but college tuition and fees are up a jaw dropping 1,140 percent. Then you wonder why we have $1.2 trillion in student debt outstanding and delinquencies at record highs.

This is a problem of pigs at the trough. The banking industry loves the profits here. We’ve also had the surge of for-profit institutions that operate virtually as paper mills. A college degree is more of a necessity for moving into the shrinking middle class because we have decimated our manufacturing sector:

At the same time we have created a boom for those that work in the financial sector. So the system is self-perpetuating an addiction to those that work in finance. This trend has larger macro consequences in the economy. There is little doubt that our massive housing bubble was brought on by an industry that saw the full potential of turning a boring item like housing into a speculative casino. It is also no surprise that banks are at it again buying up a large portion of single family homes and crowding out young families merely looking for a home to start off with. The young are battling it out in a system full of financial landmines and it would appear that the only way to play is to go into debt via the banking system. In other words, the game is rigged when housing, college, and auto debt to name a few all depend on an intricate network of financing.

Not all debt is bad of course. This is necessary for an economy. But to make it essential? That is when things become squirrely. Yet you can see how out of hand it gets with items like tuition. And why wouldn’t prices get out of hand? This is a guarantee to the financial sector backed by the US government. Inflation isn’t an issue when incomes are rising but they are not, at least for most of the population:

For the bottom 90 percent of Americans, real income growth has gone stagnant since the 1980s. This is not the case for the top 10 percent. Rising inequality is at record levels. Much of this is being pulled in by the big financial apparatus that is now usurping the power of government. In our current system, money literally buys you votes and power in D.C. and this money is filtered back through the Wall Street machinery. The chart above shows magnificent success for a few but not the majority of the country. The young are going to college at the most expensive time in history and exiting into a workforce where low wages and low benefits dominate. Crony capitalism similar to an aristocracy favors those with access to capital and established power, not necessarily merit or talent. This is how you get CEOs of financial institutions imploding the economy but leaving with multi-million dollar paydays. It wasn’t the young that led the economy into a ditch but are paying for pulling the car out.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

During a press conference on Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the unilateral creation of new “climate action hubs” that will be placed in seven locations around the country.

“On the heels of passage of the farm bill, the administration will take executive action to help farmers, ranchers and rural communities combat climate change and adapt to extreme weather and other damage it causes,” a White House official said in an email ahead of Wednesday’s announcement.

The hubs will link a network of universities, nonprofits and Federal and State agencies to help further the President’s climate change agenda without legislative help.

“These climate action hubs are really part of the president’s climate action plan and its directive of us to actually act, not wait for Congress, not wait for laws to be passed, but to do it on our own,” Vilsack said at the White House.

According to the official, the new Regional Hubs for Risk Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change are designed to address fires, invasive pests, floods and droughts that environmentalists deem products of climate change on a regional basis.

Asked why the hubs were created without Congressional input, Vilsack said that Administration officials feel it is time to do everything possible to address climate change without Congressional gridlock getting in the way.

“As the president has said repeatedly, if there is an opportunity to work with Congress, we will work with Congress, and we did,” Vilsack said. “We’ve been waiting a while for Congress to work on climate. Fair enough. There are multiple reasons why they haven’t. But in the meantime, we’re going to take action because 51 percent of the land mass of the United States is a lot of land. It’s over 1.2 billion acres of land.”

He added, “I think we’re trying to work with Congress when we can and when they can’t or won’t, we’re going to continue to act. That’s what I think the American public wants us to do.”

The hubs will be located in Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon and New Mexico. Sub-hubs will exist in Michigan, Puerto Rico and California.

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said “tens of thousands of children worldwide” had been abused systemically for years within the Catholic church.

The Vatican was denounced in a devastating UN report Wednesday for failing to stamp out child abuse and the church was urged to remove all clergy suspected of raping or molesting children.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said “tens of thousands of children worldwide” had been abused systemically for years within the Catholic church.

It urged the Holy See to “immediately remove all known and suspected child sexual abusers from assignment and refer the matter to the relevant law enforcement authorities for investigation and prosecution purposes”.

Washington PostFebruary 5, 2014
DAYTON, Ohio — Shooter and victim were just a pair of pixels, dark specks on a gray streetscape. Hair color, bullet wounds, even the weapon were not visible in the series of pictures taken from an airplane flying two miles above.

But what the images revealed — to a degree impossible just a few years ago — was location, mapped over time. Second by second, they showed a gang assembling, blocking off access points, sending the shooter to meet his target and taking flight after the body hit the pavement. When the report reached police, it included a picture of the blue stucco building into which the killer ultimately retreated, at last beyond the view of the powerful camera overhead.

“I’ve witnessed 34 of these,” said Ross McNutt, the genial president of Persistent Surveillance Systems, which collected the images of the killing in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, from a specially outfitted Cessna. “It’s like opening up a murder mystery in the middle, and you need to figure out what happened before and after.”
As Americans have grown increasingly comfortable with traditional surveillance cameras, a new, far more powerful generation is being quietly deployed that can track every vehicle and person across an area the size of a small city, for several hours at a time. Though these cameras can’t read license plates or see faces, they provide such a wealth of data that police, businesses, even private individuals can use them to help identify people and track their movements.

Already, the cameras have been flown above major public events, such as the Ohio political rally where Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) named Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, McNutt said. They’ve been flown above Baltimore; Philadelphia; Compton, Calif.; and Dayton in demonstrations for police. They’ve also been used for traffic impact studies, for security at NASCAR races — and at the request of a Mexican politician, who commissioned the flights over Ciudad Juarez.Read the entire article

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Brandon Walker interviews Dr. Jim Garrow, philanthropist and worker for one of the largest non-profit organizations on the planet to save female children from slaughter in China. He has been featured on several media outlets throughout the world. As a guest of Now the End Begins radio program he drops a bombshell on the world here. Dr. Garrow claims that up to a week ago, he was covert CIA. To top it off, he states he knows that Obama ordered the murders of Tom Clancy and Andrew Breitbart!

(CNSNews.com) - The debt of the U.S. government has increased $6.666 trillion since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, according to the latest numbers released by the Treasury Department.

When President Obama was first inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, the debt of the U.S. government was $10,626,877,048,913.08, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt. As of Jan. 31, 2014, the latest day reported, the debt was $17,293,019,654,983.61—an increase of $6,666,142,606,070.53 since Obama’s first inauguration.

The total debt of the United States did not exceed $6.666 trillion until July 2003. In the little more than five years of the Obama presidency, the U.S. has accumulated as much new debt as it did in it’s first 227 years.

The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.

[It won't be just major league facilities. Keep your eyes peeled for old and especially new local stadiums and arenas of all types and what changes they're making. A very clever disguise. Not happy news but we must be informed. - Zen]

by Dave Hodges

Did you know that a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered documents that confirmed the State Department’s role in allowing members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a known terrorist group, to bypass airport security while traveling through the US in 2012? This fact is going to enrage you as discover what the professional sports teams have in store for their fans as they are preparing to grope without the existence of any provocation.

Hiding In Plain Sight

Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the reportsofFEMA relocation campsin the United States are true and verifiable. In the early days of the FEMA camp allegations, the government responded by stating that the facilities were only for a sudden and dramatic influx of illegal immigrants. Thirty million illegal aliens later, the camps have yet to be staffed with even one illegal alien. Yet, official government documents reveal that, not only are FEMA camps real, that are meant for you and me, not illegal aliens.

Many people have an image of FEMA camps that look like the following.

The above image is accurate. However, it is more likely that you and your family could be confined and a FEMA camp that looks like this.

The above picture is Reliant Stadium located in Houston following Hurricane Katrina. The newer FEMA camps will soon be places where we used to spend Sunday afternoons cheering for our favorite team. The new FEMA camp will be a place where enjoyed a hot dog while trying the catch foul balls. These new re-education facilities will consist of places where we used to chip and put. Virtually, all public venues will be used to detain undesirable Americans under the NDAA

The Domestication Process

The process of training America to become slaves of the state begins with the TSA. There is a trend among major league sport leagues which is very disturbing. Major league Baseball and The Pro Golfers Association has joined the National Football League (NFL) in participating in the police state surveillance grid. The National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League will soon be joining all professional sports entities in participating in the martial crackdown of the United States. All of these entities have agreed to TSA type of intrusive searches. And all of these professional sports leagues have agreed to allow their facilities to be used “community centers” in times of emergency.

Meet the NFL, the New TSA

The NFL is the current trend setter in the indoctrination of the American people into living under total martial law. The NFL is is indeed the new TSA.

The National Football League has instituted new security rules at all stadiums which bans certain items. Prohibited items include, but are not limited to: Purses larger than a clutch bag, coolers, briefcases, backpacks, fanny packs, cinch bags, seat cushions, luggage of any kind, computer bags and camera bags or any bag larger than the permissible size.” And, they have granted themselves the “right” to touch you anywhere, in their enhanced pat downs from the ankles and above. Welcome to the TSA’s Police State America, NFL style.

In September of 2011, Simon Properties, the largest owners of malls in North America inked a deal with DHS to allow their malls to be used as detention centers in times of “national emergency”. DHS has followed suit with their plans to use sports facilities as detention centers (i.e. FEMA camps).

DHS and FEMA have even rehearsed for martial law detentions at various sports stadiums. The most well-known of these “rehearsed” events took place in Denver

On September 23, 2011, the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA conducted a disaster drill in Denver, Colorado that they called Operation Mountain Guardian. The plan was all-inclusive and basically shut down the Denver metropolitan area including Denver international Airport, many malls, many schools and several other public venues including Sports Authority Field where the Denver Broncos play professional football. Why didn’t this event put people in the streets by the tens of thousands? To rub salt in the wound a similar drill was conducted at Giants Stadium in New York in the same year.

As a part of the drill, several bus loads of school children were taken to Sports Authority Field along with their teachers. Surrogate parents were hired by FEMA to attempt to pick up their children at the stadium. The training was apparently a desensitization exercise for security personnel designed to refuse demands to pick up their children from these “pretend” parents. The real parents of these children were not properly notified that their children would be transported to the stadium and would be a part of this disaster drill. As a parent, I would have a major problem with the non-notification of the relocation of children. I find this ironic, because before a school child is allowed to go on a field trip, their parents and teachers are required to fill out a multiple list of permission forms that must be signed by parent or guardian of the child. This is a sign of things to come courtesy of FEMA and DHS.

As if this is not bad enough, the NFL and DHS just announced their Super Bowl security measures. During the 2012 Super Bowl, thousands of stadium vendors were taught how to spot “potential terrorist activities” during a mandated TSA training program. Fans were also subject to full body pat downs, a policy ordered by the DHS in 2011. Every fan who attends the Super Bowl will not only have their genitals touched, but will also have their food ex-rayed along with their bodies. At this year’s Super Bowl, even a fan’s food will be X-Rayed. This is insane!

American Thinker exposes some interesting information which indicates that the current occupant of the White House may have existed in two places at the same time.

Of course, conflicts with documentation are no strangers to this president. Resolving them or even acknowledging that there are problems would be something new.

The article highlights a speech by B. Hussein Obama on May 3, 1990, in which he is reported by the Illinois Daily Herald as saying he moved to Southeast Asia at the age of two, following the divorce of his parents and his mother’s subsequent remarriage to an Indonesian man.

The paper quotes him as attending school until the fifth grade in Indonesia.

A little earlier in that same year, on March 19th, 1990, the LA Times reported the story of the Hawaiian-born Obama moving to Indonesia and getting up every morning at 5am to take correspondence classes in English. The story continues that he remained in Indonesia for six years, until he returned to the U.S. and lived with his maternal grandparents, to “prepare for college.” Eight years old and already preparing for college, he’s a real-life Doogie Howser.

Then again, the October 2008 text from Hawaii Business reported the following:

“Now, kids from Hawaii’s public schools can also claim ties to the Democratic presidential nominee. I acquired the picture below from Winifred (Wakai) Otaguro, who was in Ms. Sakai’s kindergarten class at Noelani Elementary School in 1967. Otaguro’s mother, Betty Wakai, had written the names of most of the kids in the class on the back of the picture. Her writing identifies the first little boy in the third row as “Barry Obama.” Obama’s sister Maya Soetoro-Ng confirms that the boy is Obama, however, the Department of Education has been unable to find his records.”

At the time, in 2008, not being able to find the school records must have seemed odd. Now, it’s as commonplace as Joe Biden saying something stupid. It’s to be expected.

So there are two sources quoting Obama as saying he lived in Indonesia at a time a photo and teacher’s handwriting indicate he was in Hawaii.

With anyone else this type of apparent fraud would demand a criminal investigation. With B. Hussein Obama, simply ignoring it should be sufficient.

Watch this video, taken from a police raid in Des Moines, Iowa. Send it to some people. When critics (like me) warn about the dangers of police militarization, this is what we’re talking about. You’ll see the raid team, dressed in battle-dress uniforms, helmets and face-covering balaclava hoods take down the family’s door with a battering ram. You’ll see them storm the home with ballistics shields, guns at the ready. More troubling still, you’ll see not one but two officers attempt to prevent the family from having an independent record of the raid, one by destroying a surveillance camera, another by blocking another camera’s lens.

From the images in the video, you’d think they were looking for an escaped murderer or a house full of hit men. No, none of that. They were looking for a few people suspected of credit card fraud. None of the people they were looking for were inside of the house, nor was any of the stolen property they were looking for. They did arrest two houseguests of the family on what the news report says were unrelated charges, one for a probation violation and one for possession of illegal drugs.

A couple other points about this story. First, note that the police say they knocked and announced themselves before the raid. The knock and announce requirement has a long history in U.S. and English common law. Its purpose was to give the occupants of a home the opportunity to avoid property damage and unnecessary violence by giving them time to come to the door and let the police in peacefully. As you can see from the video, the knock and announce today is largely a formality. The original purpose is gone. From the perspective of the people inside, there’s really no difference between this sort of “knock and announce” and a no-knock raid. (The covering of the officers’ faces is also troubling, though also not uncommon.)

Historically, the other purpose of the knock-and-announce requirement is to avoid the inevitable tragedy that can result if homeowners mistake raiding police for criminal intruders. As the requirement has been eroded, allegedly to protect the safety of police officers, we’ve seen plenty of tragedy — and many of those tragedies have been the deaths of police officers. There was another one just last December. And it almost happened here:

Prince’s son, Justin Ross, was in the bathroom when police burst in, and he was carrying a gun that he has the legal right to carry. “I stood up, I drew my weapon, I started to get myself together to get out the door, I heard someone in the main room say police. I re-holstered my weapon sat back down and put my hands in my lap,” Ross recalls.

Ross says he didn’t hear the police announcement until after one officer had already attempted to kick in the door. Had that officer been successful, there’s a good chance that Ross, the police officer, or both would be dead. The police department would then have inevitably argued that Ross should have known that they were law enforcement. But you can’t simultaneously argue that these violent, volatile tactics are necessary to take suspects by surprise and that the same suspects you’re taking by surprise should have known all along that they were being raided by police. Well you can, and police do, and judges and prosecutors usually support them. But the arguments don’t logically coexist.

Finally, note that police department officials say they “do not have a written policy governing how search warrants are executed.” That’s inexcusable. Most police departments do. But whether or not they’re governed by a formal policy, the use of these kinds of tactics for nonviolent crimes like credit card fraud is hardly unusual, and it’s happening more often, not less. I’ve reported on jurisdictions where all felony search warrants are now served with a SWAT team. At least one federal appeals court has now ruled that under the Fourth Amendment, there’s nothing unreasonable about using a SWAT team to perform regulatory inspections. To be fair, two others have ruled that such tactics are not reasonable. But it’s concerning that this would even be up for debate. We have plenty of discussion and analysis about when searches are appropriate. We also need to start talking about how.

Justice Antonin Scalia predicts that the Supreme Court will eventually authorize another a wartime abuse of civil rights such as the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. (AP Photo)

Justice Antonin Scalia predicts that the Supreme Court will eventually authorize another a wartime abuse of civil rights such as the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.

"You are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again," Scalia told the University of Hawaii law school while discussingKorematsu v. United States, the ruling in which the court gave its imprimatur to the internment camps.

The local Associated Press report quotes Scalia as using a Latin phrase that means "in times of war, the laws fall silent," to explain why the court erred in that decision and will do so again.

"That's what was going on — the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot," Scalia said. "That's what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It's no justification but it is the reality."

When the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, had the chance to get out of the Japanese-American internment camps and fight in World War II, he jumped at it, eventually earning a Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry" near San Terenzo, Italy, in 1942. You should read his Medal of Honorcitation here.

CNBCFebruary 3, 2014U.S. stocks were hammered on Monday, with benchmark indexes falling through key support levels after a gauge of factory activity disappointed, heightening concern about the economy before Friday's monthly jobs report.

"A report like this scares people ahead of the payroll number on Friday," said Andres Garcia-Amaya, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, who added the report's soft new orders component was of particular concern.

"We had such a strong year last year there was complacency among investors," who questioned whether they should take some profits or see if there were further reasons to invest in the U.S., with the trouble in emerging markets proving to be the initial catalyst for the steep selling in recent sessions, he added.Read the entire article

This recovery is the most lopsided recovery the US has faced in more than a generation. Wal-Mart recently announced a big hit to their bottom-line because of the recent cuts to the nationwide food stamp program. Over 47 million Americans now depend on food stamps to get by on a monthly basis to feed their families. In reality, these are debit cards that are automatically refilled on a monthly basis causing queues to form at some Wal-Marts on the last day of the month at midnight. This is a massive market. In fiscal year 2013 over $76 billion in food stamps were issued. This has also led to a mini renaissance in stores like Family Dollar and the 99 Cents Store. Even these low priced giants have faced tougher challenges as the nation’s poor get even poorer. There doesn’t seem to be any major retrenchment on the number of food stamp participants. How can that be if the employment figures are supposedly looking so rosy? The issue of course is that many of the new jobs have come in the form of low wage work. Many food stamp recipients are actually employed and are part of the working poor. When Wal-Mart takes a hit because of a cut in food stamp benefits you know that this recovery is barely treading water.

Wal-Mart takes a hit on food stamp benefits

Wal-Mart for better or worse provides some of the lowest prices amongst big retailers. So when this giant confirms that the cut in food stamps is impacting their sales it is worth listening:

“(CNN Money) The cut in food stamps went into effect Nov. 1. Food stamps had been increased during the height of the recession, but that expansion expired without Congressional action.

The expiration of the program saved the government $5 billion.

More cuts in food stamp funding could be on the way. A bipartisan deal on a new farm bill reached earlier this week could trim $90 a month in benefits for 850,000 food stamp recipients, saving the government nearly $1 billion a year.”

This is a big deal considering that we are still near a peak in food stamp usage:

Source: SNAP

It is hard to say whether the numbers would be higher if it weren’t for the government pulling back on food stamp funding. Fiscal year 2014 started in October 2013 so we’ll likely have a better sense in later reports but Wal-Mart is probably a leading indicator on the nation’s poor. Food stamps have provided a Band-Aid for millions in terms of not turning this Great Recession into the next Great Depression. However this should not be seen as some kind of endorsement for the recovery. It is hard to call this a recovery when the ranks of American poor only seem to be growing. The financial industry has done exceptionally well but very little has trickled down to the public.

The amount allocated to food stamp funding has only remained elevated in spite of the recession ending officially in the summer of 2009:

Part of this EBT recovery is because of low wage jobs being added. Why is this recovery so weak? Because many of the jobs being added are in the low wage sectors:

These are the top five job fields for growth as forecasted by the BLS:

-1. Personal care aides

-2. Registered nurses

-3. Retail salesperson

-4. Home health aides

-5. Food preparation

All of these carry annual salaries under $35,000. Try sending your kids to a good college, pay for healthcare, and out compete Wall Street to buy a home with that income. No wonder why a drop of $90 in monthly food stamps is enough to shake the bottom-line of the biggest retailer in our country. The growing income inequality in the nation is a big issue when a large part of the system is built on financial cronyism. Trying to force massive austerity on the poor and working class while giving out corporate welfare to the financially connected has resulted in this massive chasm between poor and rich. Don’t expect food stamp usage to pull back dramatically anytime soon short of the government continuing to cut benefits.

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Most Corrupt States in U.S.

From bribery and kickbacks, to embezzlement and election crime, the American politician has been involved in them all. While some states with more politicians can be expected to have more corruption, as these graphics show it is not always the case.

History of the Vatican

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